no more bangs

So it's been about a month since I last updated this journal. Aside from some drabbling to blow off steam, I'm still working hard on my two Help_Japan commission fics. They both star Mai, oddly enough, and it's been enlightening to dig into her character and situation in new ways.

I've spent the last week rewriting the first chapter of my June+Mai+Zuko fic, as I realized the current draft really needed them to meet earlier in the story than I'd had them doing so. Learning about June's character has been a lot of fun and, as I revise her dialogue in the new draft, I feel like I've finally gotten a hold on her personality and what sets her apart from Mai. I'm really excited for this project because, while it's ballooned into something more epic than I imagined, it's pretty much bad people doing bad things to worse people. Haven't done a story like that before, so it's fun. My other Mai commission fic, the spiritual fusion with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, is quickly becoming very meta in strange ways.

As I declared in an earlier post, I wouldn't be joining the Avatar Big Bang unless I achieved certain goals by the end of May. Since I didn't, I won't be in this year's Bang. And I gotta say... it's liberating. It's nice not to have a deadline for another community fanfic exchange thingy. It's just me and the two commission fics in my queue. After that, I gotta finish Full Metal Bitch, and then... anything.